36 NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



mouuts some low twig, expands its tail-feathers, and gives forth a very- 

 sprightly trill that echoes through the swampy thicket with an effect which, 

 once noticed and identified with the performer, is not likely to be ever mis- 

 taken. Nuttall calls this song loud, sweet, and plaintive. It is to my ear 

 more sprightly than pathetic, and has a peculiarly ventriloquistic effect, as 

 if the ]icrformer were at a much greater distance than he really is. 



Their I'ood, when they first arrive, and that which they feed to their young, 

 consists very largely of insects, principally coleopterous ones, with such few 

 seeds as tliey can glean. After the breeding-season, when their young can 

 take care of themselves, they eat almost exclusively the ripened seeds of the 

 coarse water grasses and sedges. They are very devoted to their young, and 

 often display great solicitude for their safety, even when able to take care of 

 themselves, and often expose themselves to dangers they carefully avoid at 

 other times, and are thus more easily procured. At all other times they are 

 difficult to shoot, running, as they do, through the grass and tangled thickets, 

 and rarely rising on the wing. They dive from thicket to thicket with great 

 rapidity, and even when wounded have a wonderful power of running and 

 hiding themselves. 



Mr. Audubon met with them, during autumn and winter, among the flat , 

 sand-bars of the Mississippi, which are overgrown with rank grasses. Though 

 not in flocks, their numbers Avere immense. They fed on grass-seeds and 

 insects, often wading for the latter in shallow water in the manner of the 

 Tringidce, and when wounded and forced into the water swimming off to 

 the nearest shelter. He also met with these birds abundantly dispersed in 

 the swamps of Cuyaga Lake, as well as among those along the Illinois Eiver 

 in the summer, and in the winter up the Arkansas Eiver. 



Mr. Townsend observed these birds on the head-waters of the Upper Mis- 

 souri, but did not meet with them beyond. 



In Maine, Mr. Boardman gives it as a regular summer visitant at Calais, 

 arriving there as early as March, becoming common in May, and breeding in 

 that locality. Professor Verrill found it in Western Maine, a summer visitant 

 and breeding, but did not regard it as common. From my own experience, in 

 the neighborhood of Boston, I should have said the same as to its infrequency 

 in Eastern Massachusetts, yet in certain localities it is a very abundant sum- 

 mer resident. Mr. William Brewster has found it breeding in large num- 

 bers in the marshes of Fresh Pond, where it arrives sometimes as early as 

 tlie latter part of March, and where it remains until JSTovember. In the 

 western part of the State it is more common as a migratory bird, and has not 

 been found, in any numbers, stopping to breed. Mr. Allen never met with 

 any later than May 25. They were observed to be in company with the 

 Water Thrush, and to be in every way as aquatic in their habits. In the 

 autumn he again met with it from the last of September through October, 

 always in bushy marshes or wet places. ]\Ir. Mcllwraith states tliat in the 

 vicinity of Hamilton, Ontario, it is a common summer resident, breeding 



